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Weekly News Round Up

Making news this week:Changes to Queensland adoption laws allow same-sex couples to become parents, the oldest known evidence of Aboriginal settlement in Australia has been discovered, over 200 asylum seekers have drowned off the Libyan coast and the United Nations warn the world is not on track to achieve temperature goals.

Adoption laws in Queensland changed to allow same-sex couples to become parents

Five rescue ships, coordinated by the Italian coastguard, were within sight of the asylum seekers but, despite attempts to rescue them, most died, the International Organization for Migration’s (IOM) chief spokesman, Leonard Doyle said.

“Two rubber dinghies, which is what they are, rubber dinghies, packed with migrants, totalling over 300 we think in all … have succumbed to the the waves off Libya in very bad weather,” he said.

The latest incident takes the death toll in the Mediterranean to 4,220 migrants so far this year, compared with 3,777 for the entirety of 2015.

But as the agreement came into effect, the United Nations was warning that greenhouse gas emissions in 2030 would exceed by 12 billion to 14 billion tonnes what is needed to keep global warming to an internationally agreed target.